


you'll find me in the region of the summer stars

by molotovhappyhour



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Space, Eren's an Alien, M/M, No Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 11:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7755466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molotovhappyhour/pseuds/molotovhappyhour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(<i>“what did you wish for?”</i> </p><p>Levi had laughed, the sound echoing off the bent walls of the ruined starship around them before rising toward the sky. “<i>it was stupid</i>,” he’d said, and his words were quiet enough that they were almost swallowed by the remnants of his laughter. </p><p>“<i>i want to know anyway</i>,” Eren had told him, had stood from where he’d been crouched beside the dislodged copilot’s seat. “<i>what did you wish for?</i>”</p><p>“<i>it’s supposed to be a secret,</i>” Levi had said, and there had been something mischievous in his smile, and it had softened the lines of his face. But then his eyes had glittered, and he’d lowered his voice to say, “<i>i wished for the universe</i>.”</p><p>“<i>oh</i>,” Eren had said again. And then, “<i>did it come true?</i>”)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you'll find me in the region of the summer stars

**Author's Note:**

> for the ererievents summer thing, except i'm 1.9 days early, because i have no patience.
> 
> ~follow for more space~

(They’d been watching pieces of rock streak through the outermost levels of the atmosphere of a planet Levi had called Prakṛti, far out on one of the Milky Way’s arms. It had been discovered ages before he was born, or something like that, by astronauts from a country called India. It was a word outside the scope of Levi’s tongue, and yet he’d spoken fondly of it anyway, the first time they’d come here.

Levi had held the last working components of a rusted out navigation console between his hands as they’d watched the space debris burn up in the sky. It was a lingering phenomenon, and so the pieces must’ve been large to light up the nighttime sky like it had been.

“ _we have meteor showers on earth,_ ” Levi had said softly. It had been quiet enough between them that Eren had thought he could hear the sound of the stone as it wasted away thousands of kilometers above them. “ _there’s one at the end of summer. it’s called the perseids. my mom would let me stay up late so we could watch it together_.”

“ _what does that mean?_ ” Eren had asked. Words in Levi’s language had still been difficult for him, for all that he prided himself as a fast learner—swearing had come first, and idioms were still hard to grasp, sometimes. “ _you watched rocks fall from space?_ ”

Levi had snorted softly, a puff of air from between his lips, and he’d looked away from the sky to rest his eyes on Eren’s face. “ _we called them shooting stars. we made wishes on shit like that. it was beautiful._ ” He’d paused, and the extraterrestrial rock disappeared in a cloud of smoke, twisting toward the only cloud visible in any direction. “ _made space seem close, or something._ ”

“ _oh_ ,” Eren had replied, had thought of his own home, where the stars hadn’t been so far away, where they could be breathed in every morning, burning the inside of his lungs. “ _what did you wish for?_ ”

Levi had laughed, the sound echoing off the bent walls of the ruined starship around them before rising toward the sky. “ _it was stupid,_ ” he’d said, and his words were quiet enough that they were almost swallowed by the remnants of his laughter.

“ _i want to know anyway_ ,” Eren had told him, had stood from where he’d been crouched beside the dislodged copilot’s seat. “ _what did you wish for?_ ”

“ _it’s supposed to be a secret_ ,” Levi had said, and there had been something mischievous in his smile, and it had softened the lines of his face. But then his eyes had glittered, and he’d lowered his voice to say, “ _i wished for the universe._ ”

“ _oh_ ,” Eren had said again. And then, “ _did it come true?_ ”

Levi had only smiled a little wider, had stood a little straighter, and had turned to walk down the starship’s skeleton back the way they’d come in.)

Eren holds a star between his hands.

It’s a handmade thing, enclosed in glass made of transparent interstellar gas, compressed enough to solidify into something powerful enough to keep the small star within it from breaking free. The star itself is just a hodgepodge of gases and stardust from the Lagoon Nebula, a passing stop that they’d made on their way to the planet Riighan. The glass is warm beneath his fingers, pulsating with the resonance of a dead star given new life as it glows in the almost-darkness of the Riighani dusk.

The star is a parody of the ones he’s seen so far—of the one he’d been born from itself. It’s even a facsimile of the minor stars his own people had made for special occasions, gathering the stardust of their home into a mass large enough to burn for years. It had been cheating, in a way. The nebula itself wasn’t quite heavy enough to make a new star on its own, and so they’d thought themselves the masters of the universe.

But the one in his hands is no bigger than a human baseball. It’s _puny_. If any of his people were still around, they’d be embarrassed—maybe ashamed of the effort he’d put into it. But starmaking had never been his ultimate skill, so it’s not like it’s _shocking_. And, besides, it’s not as if Levi would know the difference between this and one of their other creations. He’s never even _seen_ a handmade star.

And if Eren keeps waffling like he is, Levi never will.

A Riighani bourine grunts in the distance, fenced in not even half a kilometer from the ranch house itself. If he tries, Eren thinks he can see the shapes of the herd shifting around as they settle in for sleep, the distant red giant having begun to set not that long ago.

It seems silly, this nervousness that’s burning a hot stripe against the underside of his sternum. He’s a humanoid creature that can survive the vacuum of space by hardening his skin and crystalizing his lungs. He can breathe in starstuff and swim through nebulae, his people were born into the universe amid the riot of a star’s death throes, crafted from the stardust and interstellar gases left behind.

But none of those things _matter_ when it’s him and Levi, because navigating _their_ universe isn’t anything like being a recluse in a nebula that most people can’t travel through, much less linger in.

It’s not like the star is particularly beautiful, anyway. He’d only been able to convince it to flicker in shades of pink and purple. It’s hardly a _universe_ contained in such a small sphere of glass. It’s not exactly something to write to Earth about, or to tell friends of.

It’s not really even a legacy, or anything. It’s just a glorified nightlight.

Another bourine grunts in the pasture, swallowing the sound of Eren’s sigh.

Light opens up onto the back porch as someone steps outside, the noise from inside the ranch house shockingly loud against the nighttime quiet of a farming settlement. It’s cut off just as suddenly as it was let out when the door falls shut, and footsteps thunk against the thick hardwood to where he’s sitting.

A breeze sighs its way across the pasture, toying with the grasses at the base of the porch’s stairs.

Eren tucks the star beneath his flight jacket, a relic from a space age long past. But it was a gift, and it smells like the ship, and that’s more than enough reason to keep it around.

“Is this the sort of party life you’re used to out in space, or is this just a personal preference?” Hanji takes a seat beside him, and the lamplight defines the regal cut of their nose when Eren turns his head to glance at them. Their glasses reflect the starlight above them both and make their eyes impossible to see. “You’re not usually this quiet when Levi drops by.”

“Long trip,” Eren says. When he speaks he can taste the remnants of the Lagoon Nebula weaving between his teeth, the grit of the stardust still tingling on his tongue. “I didn’t sleep much this time.”

“Oh.” They hum into the quiet. “You know, I don’t know if it’s because you _look_ like a human most of the time, but you have a lot of human in your gestures.”

“I spend almost all of my time with one,” Eren replies. The star is warm against his stomach, hidden beneath the flight jacket. “I’m bound to pick up a little more than the language, thankfully.” Eren glances over toward them again, watching Hanji’s face. “Who _wouldn’t_ want to tell jokes like those?”

Their laughter is loud enough to startle one of the bourines, causing it to bellow a sound toward the ranch house. It makes the porch rattle under Eren’s backside. “Sure, but what I _meant_ was that your shoulders sort of hunch near your ears when you’re worried about something.” The wind breathes against the rough grasses a second time, scattering Hanji’s hair over their lenses. “Is that something you got from Levi too?”

When Eren shrugs, he realizes just _how_ close his shoulders had been to his ears. It makes his cheeks burn. “I’m just—trying to give Levi something. It just never seems like the right... time.” He pauses, and the nebula once again hovers against the back of his tongue, as if he’s still sitting near its center. “That sounds very... human. I think I heard that in a movie once.”

Hanji laughs again, but this time none of the animals in the pasture react. They smell a little bit like they’d been drinking. “Then you’ve probably heard this in a movie too. There is no _right_ time for gift-giving. Humans don’t have a right time! The only time they have is a _wrong_ time for _not_ giving gifts, like missing a birthday or a holiday or something.”

Eren curls his toes against the soles of his sneakers. They’re older now, much more worn from the adventures they’d been on after they’d been bought on one of the planets in one of the spiral arms. He can’t remember which one it was, really. All he knows is that nothing dangerous had happened there, and the only thing they’d done was get him a new wardrobe.

“But what if this is a wrong time for a gift?” Eren says to the toes of his shoes. There’s a particularly large smear of dirt on the fabric of his right sneaker. “There’s the whole flight home if he doesn’t like it.”

“You’re in love! It’s always the best time for a gift.” Hanji leans close, and it’s then that Eren is _sure_ that they’ve been drinking inside. “What did you get him? Is it a souvenir from one of the planets that you visited? Is it something new for the ship?”

“I’m not _telling_ you.” Eren bites his tongue on the urge to ask them for advice. He _knows_ the star pressed against his stomach isn’t anything particularly impressive, but he doesn’t need anyone to _tell_ him that, least of all someone that Levi _likes_ and generally _respects_. It would be a crushing blow to his ego, a knock-out punch, and it would certainly send him sprawling. “It’s a secret.”

Hanji huffs theatrically, pushing their hair away from their forehead only for it to flop back over the rims of their glasses. “ _Fine_ , I didn’t want to know anyway.” The trees on either side of the ranch house rattle in the next breeze, the leaves whispering to each other in the semi-darkness. The pause goes on long enough that Eren wonders if Hanji is considering going to sleep right there on the stairs. But then they sigh, soft as the nighttime breeze itself, and say, “I’ve always thought people overcomplicate the gift-giving process. Levi would gladly take anything from you because _you_ touched it.” They lean over, only enough to nudge him gently with their elbow. “He’s sentimental that way.”

 _I know_ , Eren wants to say, but the words turn to moonrock in his mouth and make it impossible to speak properly. It clings to his teeth like wet cement. _I like that about him_.

Hanji’s knees creak when they stand, a symptom of the high-gravity environment that they work in when they’re not with Isabel and Farlan on Riighad. Even their shoulders pop in and out of place when they stretch.

Their fingers are gentle when they ruffle his hair, and not even a moment later the noise and the light return from inside the house, before disappearing once more when the door is shut behind them with a joyful shout.

And then it’s just him, the star pressed to his stomach, and the bourines sleeping soundly in the pasture.

(“ _i love you_ ,” Eren had said, the words heavy in his mouth. Levi’s language was still sticking to his teeth, then, even though his expertise had improved by leaps and bounds. The scenery hadn’t been ideal, maybe. There’d been mud clinging to both their clothes, and whatever salvage they’d managed to gather had been ruined by the torrential rain that they hadn’t known was common to the planet when they’d landed.

Levi had looked at him, mud smeared along his cheeks, and he’d said. “ _what?_ ”

Eren’s heart had buried itself in one of the puddled forming beneath their bodies as they’d stood just within the ramp of Levi’s starship—of _their_ starship.

“ _i love you_ ,” Eren had repeated himself, had done it louder, even though it was just them on board, and the rain wasn’t competing with him for Levi’s attention. “ _you found me, and you saved my life, and the second thing isn’t related to the first, except like... incidentally_.”

Levi had blinked and water had fallen from his eyelashes to trail down his cheeks like tears. And then he’d said, “ _what?_ ” He’d laughed, a little. It had stuttered against the floor.

But when Eren had kissed him, had held him close, Levi had gone pliant in his arms, had run his mud-heavy fingers through Eren’s too-damp hair, and against his lips he’d said, “ _fucking hell i love you_.”

Even caked in mud and plant-life like they were, even soaked to the skin like they were, when Eren looked at Levi he saw the _universe_ , like he always had. He saw the universe, crystal clear and hinged upon his shoulders, galaxies curling around the edges of his cheekbones, light bending around the dark color of his hair. Looking at him was enough to make his eyes water, enough to make the colors of a starscape swirl before his eyes.

He knows now, like he knew then, what Levi had wished for when the Earth drifted through the extraterrestrial debris left behind by a comet too old to label.

Maybe it’s just that he wonders if the powers of the universe, or _whatever_ , granted Levi’s wish—or if they’d granted Eren’s own, before he’d ever thought to make one.)

-

(He’d found Eren on the moon of a gas giant near the galactic core that could’ve swallowed Earth many times over. It had been sand-colored, and had hovered at the horizon of its nameless moon like a vengeful god, its light reaching over the moon’s surface with beige fingers, catching on large rocks and open craters.

The only thing the light _couldn’t_ touch was the curve of Eren’s body, tucked away in a glass cocoon that broke the gas giant’s glow into pieces before it could ever cast itself over his skin. Levi had dug out the sides of the glass casing, had brushed away the sandy soil with one gloved hand, and had thought that the person inside it was human as he’d looked at the lines of his face.

He’d been wrong, of course.

But he hadn’t found that out until Eren burst from the glass case aboard Levi’s ship, yelling in a language that the translator at Levi’s throat couldn’t place, with his eyes ablaze like a newborn star.)

The back door shutting softly is the only sound that gives Eren away.

Everyone else had gone to bed some time ago, dishes deposited in the sanitizer for cleaning in the morning. Hanji had already been lamenting the hangover coming for them as they’d shut themselves inside their bedroom with a belch and a loud yawn.

Unlike any of them, Eren makes no sound when he moves, regardless of how heavy he steps. But Levi knows him, knows the lengths of his strides almost as well as his own, and so it’s no surprise when Eren rounds the corner into the kitchen, the collar of his flight jacket popped up against the Riighani evening breeze.

Or, rephrase—it’s no surprise to _him_ when Eren rounds the corner into the kitchen. Eren himself freezes in the doorway, his hands tucked into his pockets, and he reacts in a way that reminds Levi that, no matter how much Eren looks like he is, he’s never been human.

It’s with a whisper-hiss of “holy _shit_ ” that Eren’s skin hardens from his forehead to below his throat, and Levi’s sure that it reaches beneath his clothes, all the way to the soles of his feet. His skin glitters when it does this, catches the light like facets on a gem and throws it against the nearest surface. The color in his eyes circles his pupils like light around a black hole, and when his eyelashes kiss his cheeks, he almost hears them brush against the curve of his skin. Even his _hair_ stiffens into thicker threads, rubbing against each other with the sound of wind chimes.

“Um,” Eren says, shifting his weight between his feet, his body already working its way back to baseline in much the same way that it had risen to a potential challenge—from his forehead to the soles of his feet, everything shifts back into the semblance of human texture.

It doesn’t change much of anything, really. Eren is still something celestial, divine by _right_ , glimmering with the dying gasps of a star gone wild with emotion at the end of its life. He wears his humanness just like he dons stardust, and every time Levi looks at him, he’s left _breathless_. Just like the first time. Just like the second.

Just like now.

Levi slides off the barstool where he’d taken up waiting, his bones creaking with stiffness from having been in one position for so long. “I was wondering if you’d fallen asleep outside,” Levi tells him, watching something flicker around the event horizons of Eren’s pupils. “You wouldn’t catch a cold, I guess, but you’d be pretty fucking uncomfortable when you woke up.”

“Probably,” Eren replies, hunching his shoulders slightly before pitching up his voice, “but I’m not sure it was worth the _mighty_ fright you gave me just now, mister.”

The laugh that Levi muffles with his fingers would’ve been loud enough to wake the entire ranch house, regardless of amount of alcohol consumed by _any_ particular party. It lodges in his throat as he tries to swallow it, and it takes a few quiet coughs to dislodge the feeling entirely.

“Nah,” Levi rolls his lips over his teeth against another smile that threatens to turn into another laugh. “It was pretty worth it to me. You should’ve seen your _face_.”

Eren scoffs, a soft thing that drops against the kitchen floor and disappears like a fleeting cloud. “That’s mean. You’re mean.”

This time Levi has no hands to muffle his laughter with, as he eases into Eren’s space to curl his fingers into the lapels of his flight jacket and pull him close. It hovers between them, warm and quiet, and Levi watches as it brings color to Eren’s cheeks, making the hollows there go from the a warm almond shade to something a little more golden, sharpening the lines of his face with emotion.

It’s a little bit euphoric, watching Eren react to him like that.

“ _You_ had me waiting,” Levi says, just as softly as he’d laughed. “So we’re even, then, I think.”

Eren huffs his hair from his forehead, scattering it along the shape of his eyebrows, and Levi reaches to smooth away the furrow between them with his thumb. It eases the tension from Eren’s face, soothes the hard lines around his mouth, and coaxes his shoulders away from where they’d risen in defense from... something.

“Come on,” Levi says when Eren doesn’t break the silence, his eyes flickering over Levi’s face instead. “We should get some sleep. Long flight tomorrow if we want to get home before some new junker hits a planet close by and we have to turn around all over again.”

Levi drops his hand from Eren’s face, taking a step back to make his way back to the final guest room where Isabel and Farlan had set them up for the night. He doesn’t even manage to turn around before Eren takes the fabric of Levi’s t-shirt between a thumb and forefinger, holding him in place.

“ _Wait_.” Eren’s voice is sharp enough to cut glass, though it isn’t loud enough to make it anywhere outside the space between them. When Levi doesn’t move, Eren drops his hand away, as if surprised that he’d stopped him from moving at all. “Um. Wait, I mean. I know you’ve _been_ waiting but I—“ The color deepens in his cheek and crawls down his throat like the beginning of a sunrise. “I was... waiting on the porch to give you something.”

Levi feels his eyebrows arch high enough that it stretches his skin almost tight enough to be painful. “To _give_ me something. You were on the porch because you had a present?”

“ _No_ , I was on the porch because I couldn’t decide when to _give_ you the present.” The huff from between Eren’s lips is an affronted one, forceful enough to wrinkle his nose. “I’ve decided on now. Since I have it with me. I’m feeling spontaneous.”

“Spontaneous,” Levi repeats, and if his eyebrows could arch any higher, he’s certain that why would. “You’re always spontaneous.”

“Could you just—“ his expression goes to war on his face, distress mixing with an emotion that looks a lot like nerves, or hope, or _something_. It’s hard to label everything that happens to Eren’s body, because there are things that move through him like they do on no one else. “Could you just close your eyes and hold out your hands, please?”

Levi shuts his eyes without comment, offering out his hands as if he were trying to catch water, cupped around the air that was soon to be replaced by whatever-it-is that had Eren outside for the _entirety_ of their small family get-together.

He should’ve been more suspicious when Eren had excused himself to the back porch, in retrospect. It isn’t often that he passes up an opportunity to drink Farlan under the table, metabolizing even alcohol that had been paint thinner in a past life without so much as a slur.

The thing that lands in his palms is a little bit heavy, but not as much as Levi would’ve expected, judging by its size. It’s about the size of a grapefruit, or a chayalroot, and its smooth surface is warm to the touch. It feels a little bit like glass, on the outside—but there’s something about it that feels even more familiar than that. It’s more like... it’s more like the molten stardust that Eren had been in when Levi had pulled him onto his freighter. Softer than glass, or something. Super-cooled plasma, maybe.

“You can open your eyes now.” Eren’s voice moves on delicate feet, which is something rare for him. There’s a hesitation in the way he speaks, and when Levi opens his eyes he can see it manifested on his face, hanging from his lips like weights.

He would’ve said something. He honestly and _truly_ would’ve said something, would’ve taken one step forward and brought Eren’s face down for a closer inspection of whatever that look is that is sitting so heavily on his face, pulling his skin tight over his bones like brittle paper. But there’s a _star_ between his own hands, just sitting inside the not-glass, swirling in a cloud that looks like leftovers from a nebula in miniature.

There’s a fucking _star_ inside a large marble, and he is _holding it_.

“Holy shit,” Levi breathes, and his voice tastes like—like—he doesn’t know. There’s not a word for this thing that’s crawling up his throat and pressing against the back of his tongue. There’s not a _word_ for the piece of the cosmos he has held in his fingers. Shit, there’s not a word in any language for the piece of the universe that Levi has right in front of him. And for all the poetry floating around behind Levi’s eyes, for all the beautiful things he’s sure that he could put together pushing against his lips, the only thing that comes out of his mouth is, “this looks like a tiny star.”

It’s not very elegant, in all honesty. There’s nothing in that sentence that even hints that the feelings he feels boiling up in his chest, hot and brilliant and _life-changing_.

“It is a tiny star,” Eren says carefully. “I know it’s not very big, uh. But it was the best I could do. I was never very... _good_ at it. But I got some color in there, which is more than I could do _before_ , so—“

“Stop.” And Eren stops speaking. “You _made_ this?”

Eren blinks. His skin glitters as it stiffens with the rise of his nerves, and when he blinks a second time, his eyelashes scrape against his skin with a soft sigh. It isn’t until it smooths out again that Eren says, “yes?” He pauses, and his lips thin, and for a moment he goes pale. But then, he’s talking again, and it’s like the color had never slipped from his face at all, “we passed the Lagoon Nebula on the way here, and I thought that I could—I wasn’t sure if you would...”

The kitchen is so quiet that when Eren’s jacket rustles with his shrug it sounds like sandpaper scraping against the wooden floor.

(Levi remembers the first time he’d seen Eren outside their ship, dressed only in the body of the standard space suit, the fabric clinging to him like he’d been made to wear it. The helmet that was supposed to go with it was still inside the ship, left beside Levi’s own suit, detailed with insignias that gave him passage through an almost countless number of star systems.

Panic had risen hard enough in his throat to be suffocating. No organism so far had been able to survive being flash-frozen in space. It was like trying to breathe underwater, pressed down upon by an unimaginable force. It was like having the air stolen from one’s lungs.

It was one of the worst ways to die, and yet there Eren was, suspended in absolute stillness, watching the stars outside the cockpit’s viewport, the engine idling in the emptiness.

At the time, Levi had wondered if this was the way Eren’s people had gone, if this was his method of easing whatever guilt was sticking to him like a funeral shroud. But Levi could feel something in his chest splitting into pieces, leaving behind debris that made it painful to breathe, and he’d thought that it was unfair, almost. He wasn’t sure who it was most unfair to.

But then Eren hard turned his head, had smiled at him through the transparisteel window, and had lifted his fingers in a small wave.

Levi should have learned then that he’d always be full of surprises. He really ought to have figured that he would spend their entire lives learning everything there was to know about who Eren was—about all the things he could do.

But back then, the only thing Levi had been able to think about was how beautiful Eren had looked, even after the heart failure he’d almost made him suffer.)

“I didn’t know you could make stars,” Levi says, though he doesn’t really know how long his pause had been, or if the conversation they’d been having is even still in the same place that it had been.

Eren’s shrug is stiff, as if it hurts his body to move that way, and he clears his throat before speaking. “It’s not really special. A lot of the—it’s a thing that people would make for celebrations, or expensive decoration, or for newborns. It’s not like it’s—“ Eren drops his eyes, shifting his weight between his feet. “I just thought that if you could just wish on a piece of fucking space-rock, why not wish on something that’s kind of like the real thing.” When he swallows, his skin glitters. “But it’s probably a better... nightlight, or something.”

Levi blinks slowly, lifting the starglobe with one hand to hold it up to the light. The kitchen lighting is painfully artificial compared to the semi-natural light held between his fingers. The lamplight bends around the sphere, a little, before it ends up hitting the floor by Levi’s bare feet.

He curls his toes against the wood, and he thinks. It’s just the two of them and the sound of Eren’s breathing, and from the corner of his eye he can see Eren’s gaze flicker between the star in his hand and Levi’s face. Eren’s attention is like a touch all on its own, making the skin prickle wherever his eyes land, as they trace their way across Levi’s cheekbone and down his throat before falling on the line of his wrist and up around the curve of his fingers.

(“ _did it come true?_ ” Eren had asked ages ago, back when his voice had still been heavy with an accent that Levi had never heard the likes of, before or since. His smile had been small, but his question hadn’t been, and the openness in his expression had struck something deep within Levi’s chest.

He’d only been able to smile, then. He hadn’t known what to say that would’ve been the right answer.)

It takes too many heartbeats for Levi to find his voice. But when he does he says, “this is _beautiful_.” There’s a pause between one thought and the next. And then, “but I haven’t needed to wish on anything in—shit, a _long_ fucking time.”

“Oh,” Eren says, softly. It’s like a bubble as it rises to the ceiling before popping against the kitchen light and vanishing altogether. “Yeah. I guess so.” There’s something despondent in the way his voice turns downward, and Levi sets the star on the counter before Eren can make a retreat toward the kitchen’s entryway.

Levi catches Eren’s hand, now that both of them are free from his pockets, and he pulls him close enough to feel the warmth of a not-so-distant star.

Eren smells like stardust—if that makes any sense. He smells like the origin of things, like the sigh of the universe as it considers a job well done. He smells the way habitable moons do, like they’d been moulded with loving hands, like they were born in the middle of a rainstorm, ready for springtime.

“I can’t tell if you’re being obtuse or not.” Their noses are close, so close, and Levi raises himself up on his toes just enough to brush them together. “Eren, I wished on a stupid shooting star, and I got _you_. What the fuck else could I want?”

Eren’s breath ghosts over Levi’s lips and goosebumps rise on his skin. “The universe,” Eren says.

“That’s what I said I got, isn’t it?” Levi drops back down to stand on his feet properly, watching Eren’s face.

“That’s so—“ Eren starts to speak, but the words splutter against the floor, limp and unmoving. He swallows, and tries again. “That’s so _cheesy_. That’s probably the cheesiest thing you’ve ever said.”

The laugh that frees itself from Levi’s throat muffles itself against Eren’s mouth, and when he parts his lips beneath Levi’s tongue, he tastes like a newborn universe. It’s a miracle, that they’re here. It’s something divine and untouchable, the way the universe is _meant_ to be. He feels like he was born for this.

“I love you,” Levi whispers, and his words are wet against Eren’s mouth. “Even though you’re spacebrained, sometimes.”

The relief in Eren’s voice is palpable, and it lays over them both like a blanket. “I love _you_ ,” Eren tells him, and he sounds so fucking happy that Levi can barely stand it, can feel starlight bursting from beneath his own skin. “Even when I’m being spacebrained.”

Both of them laugh, this time, and Levi can feel it vibrate in the soles of his feet.

This time, when Levi tugs Eren to the bedroom, there’s no resistance at all.

(“ _you could wish on me_ ,” Eren will say after they’ve left Riighan behind, hyperspace splitting around them like a river around a stone. “ _if you wanted_.”

“ _what is it with you and wishing?_ ” Levi will ask, setting the autopilot to drop them out of hyperspace when they’re in the system that they’d chosen. Unless they brush by an unmapped black hole, they’re almost guaranteed an easy flight. “ _were you jealous of burning comet dust?_ ”

“no _,_ ” Eren will say, and his indignation will land against the console with a metallic clang. “ _it’s just—you could, if you wanted to_.”

“ _you’re giving me a lot of options_.” Levi will tap his index finger against the starglobe, hanging from the dashboard above their heads, held there by a chain made of reinforced meteorite. “ _i won’t know what to do with all this cosmic power._ ”

When Eren smiles, time will seem to slow, like it always does. And Levi will lean over to kiss him, like he always does. It’s impossible to deny gravity like that, after all.

And then Eren will say, “ _you can do whatever the fuck you want with it_.” Another kiss, and Levi’s lips will tingle. “ _you’ve got time to figure it out._ ”

“ _that’s a commitment_ ,” Levi will tell him, will offer his hand between the pilot and copilot’s seats, and will feel his heart lift when Eren takes it. “ _since it’s implied you’ll be around while i figure out just what all this wishing would be good for_.”

“ _i’ll be around after you figure it out_.” Eren’s voice will be muffled, a little, by something Levi can’t define. It’ll puff out around their feet, like freshly fallen snow. “ _that’s not implied. that’s a guarantee_.”

When Eren says that, it will feel heavier than the words seem to think that they are. But Levi will squeeze Eren’s hand, will hold it tightly, and Eren will squeeze back, just as hard. It will feel like he’s holding something precious, then. Something deeper and brighter than the star hanging from above them, swinging gently with the momentum of space travel.

Levi will be able to put the right words to it eventually.

That is, of course, unless Eren beats him to it.)


End file.
